SQUEEEEEE!!!! They're heeeeeeere!!!!

THE APPLES, PEOPLE! THE APPLES ARE HERE!

This has not been, by anyone's standard, a stellar weekend. Unless your idea of a rocking time is canceling plans for your kid's first sleepover (which you were going to stay for--for his moral support, of course. and also? for the wine)(for the moms. wine for the moms. not the kids. really, people), having to turn down super-reduced admission tickets to the local garlic-themed amusement park (which sounds hella lame, but is actually super fun, and the invite was from people we haven't seen in forever and have been missing), all while laying on the couch with a fever hovering between 100-101, a cough that rips your chest and throat apart every. single. time., and a razorblades-in-my-throat kind of sore throat.

And let's not forget the whining 4 year old who is beseeching you to go outside and play with him, get on the floor again and play with him, feed him again (from my perspective, this kid should be a linebacker; why is he so tiny?!)(a linebacker is the big guy, right?), and constantly asking you, "why do I need to use my inside voice?!! why? why? why? WHY?????"

And you can't get too mad at him because he's just confused as to why you're a lump on the couch (this is where the short-term memory issues of preschool come in and he doens't remember from one time to the next that "mommy is sick!") and why is his dad still in London and talking to him through a computer, instead of playing in the back yard with him with his new remote control carssssssss???!!!!

If all of that sounds like fun to you? I wish I'd known that on Friday--I could have set you up with a fabulous good time living my life for the last 48 hours.

So this morning, after sucking back 2 bags of cough drops in 24 hours (can you overdose on those? because I may have) and taking more deep breaths and counting to 10 more times than I can count and feeling like the crappiest parent ever in the history of the world, I decided that we had to do something. Not a super busy something or a super active something or a super involved something. But something to keep Ethan and I from spending our days in either straight-jackets or tears (and just as an aside, even with doing something, we narrowly avoided a strait-jacketed, teary evening tonight. super).

After tossing a few ideas at him, we decided to go apple picking. Same farm we went to a few weeks ago to pick strawberries. It was a little ridiculous--an hour drive for what turned out to be about 20 minutes of actual apple picking. But since we were not equipped with a wheelbarrow, I was the one carrying the bucket, and Ethan picked pretttttty much every single apple he saw the second he saw it? It was destined to be a fairly short trip. And that's good. Because by the time we got back in the car, I felt so rotten, I was wondering if I shouldn't maybe take a nap before heading home. But since nothing says "grade A parenting" like strapping your kid in his car seat and then catching a little shut eye in the front seat, in the middle of the day, I thought better of it and we just headed home. With a giant bag of Gala and Golden Delicious. Two breeds of apples, by the way, that I have no idea what to do with except toss in his lunch box.

Ethan had a great time--this is the first time we've gone apple picking in his memory. There was this:

but I'm guessing this golden moment doesn't live on in his "10 ten coolest things I ever did," list. So I'm glad he got this opportunity, and early enough in the season that the trees were heavy with fruit and still had apples at his height so he could pick some himself. I told him we could go again when Husband gets home & he's already talking about picking more apples. Just like I'd always hoped. What a mensch.